The Joy Luck Club Joy Luck Club is a very recognized piece of work that was recognized on the New York Times best-seller list for almost a year.
The Joy Luck Club is a single book that within it contains the story of four mothers and their daughters. All the mothers were born and raised in China around the 1920's and later. After years in China they immigrated to America for a better life for their families. The stories compare and contrast the former China with the present, and compare those two with California around the 1960's and on.
The Joy Luck Club was an actual meeting started by Suyuan Woo in China. The original four families in the club changed, they were not the four talked about in the book. The book narrates the life of Chinese women Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair. At the meetings the husbands would talk and plan things while the women made dinner and prepared whatever was needed at the time for their husbands. The meetings were really competitive between the women to see who could make the best food. After the men would get done discussing and talking the women would all play mah jong. They started out playing for money, but they quit because the same woman would always win. There are four sides to a mah jong table which have to have four players. The women assigned sides for each person that would represent the four compass directions.
The main plot of all the separate stories is their relationships with their daughters. All the mothers have problems getting along with their daughters because the daughters do not fully understand what their mothers are trying to teach them. The mothers are trying to bring them up with all the strength and wisdom their mothers had. It takes many years of hard ships and disagreements before the daughters realize the importance of their mothers' teachings. The mothers never really told their daughters about their lives in China and all the problems they had growing up. They kept their stories until the time was right for their daughters to know. A few stories were kept a little too late.
Suyuan Woo, mother of Jing-mei Woo, kept her story of her two twin daughters from her previous husband to her grave. Jing-mei finds out from her father about her two sisters. The Joy Luck Club had always helped Suyuan look for her daughters. A friend of Suyuan had gone to China recently and asked around. She found a person who claimed to know them, but by different names. The sisters had sent back a letter for their mother, but by then she had already passed away. She had died from a cerebral aneurism. Jing-mei would complete her mothers dream and reunite with her sisters. It's just too bad they were found too late.
Another common point between the stories is that eventually the daughters came to accept the fact that they were Chinese. They might not have accepted it earlier in life, but they were of Chinese blood. The daughters tried to get away from Chinese culture. They thought it was nonsense and had too many rules, myths, and stories. One, for example, is of the placement of a room. Some mothers were very picky on decorating. The way a room was set out determined things like luck, happiness, and also bad karma. There are also many differences between Chinese and American values. This was a main reason why the mothers wanted their daughters to follow in traditional Chinese culture. The Chinese are very family orientated and respect their elders. Ancestors are important and a good after life is sought after; therefore, they had to lead a good life. The Americans seemed to be looser with their families and on respect.
In the story, the mothers and daughters realize they are alike. They see how they show the same strengths and weaknesses. They see the common ways in their personalities. The daughters make some of the same mistakes their mothers did. The mothers and daughters had a lot of trouble with men. They would dislike the man they had to, or chose, to marry.
All the women in this book are extremely clever and intelligent. Lindo Jong came up with a fake ancestor curse to convince her parents that her marriage was doomed, so they would have to let her go to America. Waverly, Lindo's daughter, was an unusually good chess player in her younger years as a child. She became a prodigy, but then lost her talent once she quit for a short amount of time. An-mei's mother devised a plan for her daughter to live a good life by killing herself. A fourth wife has no power, but using the myth that a distressed wife will come back to haunt the husband; he had to treat An-mei very well. Ying-Ying aborted her, what would have been, first son in China. She did it for a good reason though, her husband would cheat and flirt with women all the time, but divorce was very bad in China. She only had one way to escape her cruel husband, by aborting her son she could get away from him and go to America and remarry. There are many other instances that show the intelligence of courage of these women.
This book is really interesting. The way it shows the relationship between the families is just brilliant. There are so many things you learn about the lives of these Chinese women. By reading this book, I came to appreciate the things my mother does for me. This book shows many familiarities between Chinese and American families.
The Joy Luck Club
Joy Luck Club is a very recognized piece of work that was recognized on the New York Times best-seller list for almost a year.
The Joy Luck Club is a single book that within it contains the story of four mothers and their daughters. All the mothers were born and raised in China around the 1920's and later. After years in China they immigrated to America for a better life for their families. The stories compare and contrast the former China with the present, and compare those two with California around the 1960's and on.
The Joy Luck Club was an actual meeting started by Suyuan Woo in China. The original four families in the club changed, they were not the four talked about in the book. The book narrates the life of Chinese women Suyuan Woo, An-mei Hsu, Lindo Jong, and Ying-Ying St. Clair. At the meetings the husbands would talk and plan things while the women made dinner and prepared whatever was needed at the time for their husbands. The meetings were really competitive between the women to see who could make the best food. After the men would get done discussing and talking the women would all play mah jong. They started out playing for money, but they quit because the same woman would always win. There are four sides to a mah jong table which have to have four players. The women assigned sides for each person that would represent the four compass directions.
The main plot of all the separate stories is their relationships with their daughters. All the mothers have problems getting along with their daughters because the daughters do not fully understand what their mothers are trying to teach them. The mothers are trying to bring them up with all the strength and wisdom their mothers had. It takes many years of hard ships and disagreements before the daughters realize the importance of their mothers' teachings. The mothers never really told their daughters about their lives in China and all the problems they had growing up. They kept their stories until the time was right for their daughters to know. A few stories were kept a little too late.
Suyuan Woo, mother of Jing-mei Woo, kept her story of her two twin daughters from her previous husband to her grave. Jing-mei finds out from her father about her two sisters. The Joy Luck Club had always helped Suyuan look for her daughters. A friend of Suyuan had gone to China recently and asked around. She found a person who claimed to know them, but by different names. The sisters had sent back a letter for their mother, but by then she had already passed away. She had died from a cerebral aneurism. Jing-mei would complete her mothers dream and reunite with her sisters. It's just too bad they were found too late.
Another common point between the stories is that eventually the daughters came to accept the fact that they were Chinese. They might not have accepted it earlier in life, but they were of Chinese blood. The daughters tried to get away from Chinese culture. They thought it was nonsense and had too many rules, myths, and stories. One, for example, is of the placement of a room. Some mothers were very picky on decorating. The way a room was set out determined things like luck, happiness, and also bad karma. There are also many differences between Chinese and American values. This was a main reason why the mothers wanted their daughters to follow in traditional Chinese culture. The Chinese are very family orientated and respect their elders. Ancestors are important and a good after life is sought after; therefore, they had to lead a good life. The Americans seemed to be looser with their families and on respect.
In the story, the mothers and daughters realize they are alike. They see how they show the same strengths and weaknesses. They see the common ways in their personalities. The daughters make some of the same mistakes their mothers did. The mothers and daughters had a lot of trouble with men. They would dislike the man they had to, or chose, to marry.
All the women in this book are extremely clever and intelligent. Lindo Jong came up with a fake ancestor curse to convince her parents that her marriage was doomed, so they would have to let her go to America. Waverly, Lindo's daughter, was an unusually good chess player in her younger years as a child. She became a prodigy, but then lost her talent once she quit for a short amount of time. An-mei's mother devised a plan for her daughter to live a good life by killing herself. A fourth wife has no power, but using the myth that a distressed wife will come back to haunt the husband; he had to treat An-mei very well. Ying-Ying aborted her, what would have been, first son in China. She did it for a good reason though, her husband would cheat and flirt with women all the time, but divorce was very bad in China. She only had one way to escape her cruel husband, by aborting her son she could get away from him and go to America and remarry. There are many other instances that show the intelligence of courage of these women.
This book is really interesting. The way it shows the relationship between the families is just brilliant. There are so many things you learn about the lives of these Chinese women. By reading this book, I came to appreciate the things my mother does for me. This book shows many familiarities between Chinese and American families.